Regardless of who will succeed Merkel at the party’s annual congress on December 6-8, he or she will discover that the lines dividing domestic and foreign policy are no longer clear-cut.

Just take any of the following issues: the refugee crisis, the future construction of the eurozone and the European Union, security and defense policy, or Germany’s relationship with its eastern neighbors, particularly Russia and Ukraine.

That’s not even including the transatlantic relationship, climate change, or how digitization is going to transform the way economies, politics, and societies function. In short, foreign policy impinges increasingly on the domestic agenda—and, increasingly, vice-versa. Just think about how Merkel’s decision to open the country’s borders to one million refugees fleeing the war in Syria and Iraq affected the rest of the EU.

When she first became chancellor back in November 2005, Merkel did something that previous German leaders left until they had settled into the job. She plunged into foreign policy.

Her Social Democrat predecessor, Gerhard Schröder had left the country’s reputation in pretty bad shape. He was more interested in cultivating very close ties with the Kremlin and Beijing at the expense of working on improving relations with Germany’s immediate eastern neighbors or even thinking about the future direction of the EU.

At one point, because of the way Schröder opposed America’s invasion of Iraq, his challenge to Washington led to divisions inside NATO and the EU which became so deep and bitter that it took several years to repair the damage.

For her part, Merkel moved quickly to improve relations with the United States, with Poland, and with the EU as a whole. But apart from these efforts to undo Schröder’s foreign policy decisions (barring the Nord Stream 2 pipeline), there is one defining aspect of Merkel’s foreign policy footprint. It’s certainly not her strategic outlook, which is almost nonexistent. It’s not her support for strengthening Europe’s staggeringly underperforming security and defense policy or trying to make NATO more effective. It’s her commitment to values and freedom. Her 2015 refugee policy was a case in point.

That commitment impinged on her foreign policy. She had no qualms in telling former U.S president George W. Bush about her opposition to Guantanamo Bay or to torture. And after she had tried to forge a different relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin—far removed from Schröder’s chumminess and uncritical stance, and instead based on a more pragmatic policy and support for civil society—she shifted further Berlin’s stance toward Russia.

The decades-long German Ostpolitik so revered by the Social Democrats was discarded after Putin annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in early 2014. Then, Merkel managed to get all EU leaders to agree to impose sanctions on Russia, which to this day are still in place. She believed Putin had to pay a price for his military ventures and for disregarding international law. Such decisions by Merkel would have been inconceivable under a Social Democrat-led government in Berlin, when Germany’s eastern neighbors were viewed through the prism of Moscow.

Yes, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is trying to win as much support as possible back home after Russia blocked Ukraine’s access to the Azov Sea. In reaction, he has imposed martial law in some parts of the country and banned Russian men from entering the country in the hope of improving his poor standing in the polls ahead of next year’s presidential election.

But as Merkel made clear after Russia seized Ukrainian vessels and their crews, Russia was squarely to blame for this escalation. No ifs or buts. Yet sooner or later, she or her successor will have to decide what kind of relationship—short- or long-term—Berlin wants with Russia.

And sooner or later, Germany will have to spell out how it sees the future direction of the EU—and that includes dealing with difficult issues such as further enlargement, the stability of the eurozone, and the continuing big, divisive issue of migration.

As it is, the EU is not in good shape. What with Brexit, large protests in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms, and the Italian government challenging the EU’s rule book on budget deficits, Merkel’s successor will not have the luxury of believing that dealing with domestic issues will not impact the rest of the EU. Separating domestic policy from foreign policy is not an option, neither for Berlin nor for other EU member states.

Foreign policy is not a question of person-in-charge, at least for the Federal Republic of Germany. Since Willy Brandt's OstPolitik that led to the "re-unification" (i.e. annexation of DDR by FRG) of Germany, up to nowdays, Germany follows consistently, a cohesive foreign policy that has as main target to support and project its hegemony upon the European Continent.
The "north-stream pipeline" helps Germany to become a direct customer of Russian gas not depending on geostrategic trubles in-between (e.g. Ukraine or other east-European countries).
Thus, energy-hungry Germany gets more independent from the USA but needs the USA to balance Russia on Security (avoiding a rise of its own military spending that may erode its long-term economic development).
Since 2010 it imposed an austerity plan over the PIIGS turning them into peripheral debt-colonies. German dominance over the EU is the legacy Chancellor Merkel leaves behind; the question for her successor is how to sustain this legacy that has already surpass its culminating point of victory. The USA, Russia, Brexit, as well as the uprising of the PIIGS (including , now, France) seem to be the decisive parametres in the coming months regarding German autonomy (from US-led NATO) and supremacy/dominance of the "EU".

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Galgenstein

December 04, 20185:23 am

A very fair synopsis of Merkel's foreign policy. People like to forget about the achievements. Merkel has never been the big leader but a very effective manager on foreign relations. That's something people like to forget.

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Horowitz TOI

December 04, 20189:26 am

The EU as an economic and geopolitical structure has failed. Inequality against the working class in France is merely the tip of the iceberg. The Trump phenomenon is also a reaction by US working people to the gross failures of the defunct neo-liberal model. The crisis of 2007-2008 turned on the speculative nature of what became known as "casino capitalism". Then it was housing; today it is stocks and bonds. Consumer indebtedness is higher now than it was a decade ago. The junk bond market is dependent on high oil prices, and corporate debt is at record highs. Monopoly capitalism has intensified mergers and acquisitions by the collective central banks' use of extreme monetary policy. This corporate indebtedness can become extremely dangerous, especially so, in the next recession. The geopolitical consequences of this failed globalization has severely affected both military and trade relations between China and the US. In turn, Washington now demands that Europe pay its "fair share" into NATO. Both US political parties now believe in trade barriers and lean toward quasi-isolationism. But for how long can the monetary "smoke and mirrors" of the last two decades sustain the ever mounting debt load? This has become the essential question with regard to the entire edifice of 21st century capitalism. Meanwhile, as Western working people become poorer, democratic politics has become stranger and stranger. From the far-left to the far-right, there is no unifying theme. A once confident centrist political class is now confused and unstable. All the institutions of the liberal capitalist model are in crisis and flux. Matters have only been made worse by the environmental failures of both the scientific model (the enlightenment) and its concomitant industrial revolution. In order to survive the potential calamities ahead, Germany must proclaim a post-NATO policy of peace, with a tight eye on much closer cooperation between all the nations of Europe and South and East Asia. Offensive demilitarization at conflict points in Central and Eastern Europe must supersede the current mess that NATO and Russia now espouse as "policy". The same is true between India and China, China and the US, and the dire necessity for Middle East stabilization. Germany can play a vital role in this necessary process. True and lasting peace can NOT be achieved through realpolitik. Only a firm commitment toward the ideal can save us. The very future of civilization is now in doubt.

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Alexis de Pleshcoy

December 07, 201812:16 pm

Bismarck’s “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.” should be adapted by replacing Balkans with the East and European with “last Western”.
De Gaulle’s Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals can’t simply be at peace. A thousand years of conflicts have left too many scars in the land of shifting Empires, still thinking they are the center of the world.
The Russo-Japanese war of 1905 has shown that the Rest has risen. In 2018, Iron Sardar’s India and Deng’s China cemented that new reality; they also learned that a nuclear strategic triad is a must; listen to Mahbubani for more.
Ignoring this reality, after a century of Cenotaphs, Europe seems back to 1914, incapable of learning a lesson of peace through unity.
The EU, US inspired, protected by US taxpayer money, was supposed to bring lasting peace to Europe. Nuland or not, Ukraine is a European problem, and should be settled as such, a Europe capable to allow peoples to feel free, while living together.
The collapse of Yugoslavia, with the EU relegated to secondary role should have been a stark warning, Wolfowitz doctrine or not (SACEUR Clark citation).
The EU’s assertion of the Iraq war appears to have been accurate, but once started she should have played a far more central role in stabilizing the country; Libya and Syria followed, with the EU not participating in accordance with her weight. It is true that interacting with both Bush and Obama administration is probably far more difficult in real life, but this is where the refugee crisis started. Merkel didn’t understand that refugees are not just a million, but tens of millions, and the numbers are only rising; even Clinton has now changed course.
The world is neither like a box of chocolates, nor an Obama speech (Germany, Greece), you know what you gonna get; not even Obama will convince the German youth to board his ERI tanks and storm to anywhere, like Remarque’s in WWI volunteering to be mowed by machine guns.
With the risk of sounding defeatist, hopefully AKK will manage to build an Ostpolitik that will bring peace, along the lines of a revived Minsk II process; the gas not coming through Nord Stream II will mean brown coal burning; Ukraine can receive the equivalent in transit fees from the EU.
For the Black Sea let’s replace the eerily referenced Montreux with Kellogg-Briand, which is still in full effect, especially no FON actions.
The Earth can’t afford another war started by the Western civilization.

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